This specification relates to processes for performing facial recognition without requiring long term storage of biometric information. Systems exist today in which digital images can be processed to identify the presence and locations of human faces. Some of these systems determine feature values (e.g., the relative location and spacing of eyes, nose, jaw) to determine that a human face is present in the image.
Systems also exist today for the recognition of identified faces to automatically identify a name for the face. Many of these systems are based on formulating a biometric model of a known person's face, and storing that biometric model in the form of a facial recognition template. When an unknown face is later detected in a digital image, the unknown face is analyzed to extract feature information and that information is compared against a collection of stored biometric models of known faces to determine a close match. The unknown face is then associated with the identifier associated with the matching biometric model.
Often, however, it is impractical to maintain a database of such templates. The impracticalities may be due to both system resource constraints and other non-system resource constraints. For example, memory storage (e.g., system resource constraints) and privacy concerns, legal requirements, agreements between parties (non-system resource constraints) may limit the ability to maintain a database of templates. One solution is to generate facial recognition templates “on the fly”, i.e., at the time a facial recognition process is required. However, a system may maintain millions of photos, and the generation of templates may be time consuming as many resources are required to process the photographs.